| The average house in the UK now has 1.3 laptops. https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/apr/09/online-al... A windows laptop from today is vastly easier to code on that a C64 or whatever. Most houses would have an internet connection as well so they can get to all sorts of things. A Raspberry Pi is probably something richer kids get to play with. Have you had a look at Scratch? https://scratch.mit.edu/ Primary School kids today in Australia often get a Chromebook and have some tutoring in Scratch. Again, it gets you the ideas of coding in a way that more kids will get. You mention the lack of alternatives that got you and other kids into coding. That's probably a thing. There is so much more entertainment available today that most kids probably don't get bored like kids did in the past and sat down and learnt to code. It has to be more intentional. When I was a kid my mum was a teacher and brought home a computer over the school holidays which had no games. I taught myself databases and spreadsheets because there was a good tutorial on that. There is also probably something in that until, say, the 2010s computers were not quite ubiquitous enough that they were a constant part of kids lives. Certainly in the 1980s and 1990s there was something almost magical about the devices. A kid today who grows up in a household with smartphones, tablets, laptops and multiple smart TVs probably won't get the same thrill about moving an object around a screen as someone did 30+ years ago. |